“And I'm wanting some tactile labels
so I don't get confused with this thing,” I muttered – though I
could tell those were just up ahead in one of the pallets.
“Shouldn't that be, uh, tactical?”

“No, as those would show up
on infrared and get the person wearing them shot or cut up by
shell-splinters,” said the soft voice. “These labels were
designed to be both 'invisible' to infrared, but also easily
discerned by touch when it was dark or smoky.”

“Smoky?” I asked. “Oh, the
witches turned loose their smudge-pots...”

“They thought those
smoke-generators were effectual weapons,” said the soft voice, “and
until the Mistress of the North got onto their supplier, their use
resulted in massive numbers of their soldiers being killed.”

“Uh, why?” I asked. “Every gun
within range shot at the quick-billowing clouds of black smoke?”

“Yes, if you speak of artillery,”
said the soft voice. “The usual was to have several smaller
shells landing on or near the smoke-generating apparatus within
seconds after it started running, and the bigger shells impacting a
short while later to
'finish matters' – and all of that overlaid by rifle fire, if there
were soldiers within range.”

“S-smaller?” I asked. I was
referring to the artillery in question.

“There were some guns but slightly
larger than those smaller 'cannons' that fired high-explosive
shells,” said the soft voice. “Granted, they didn't fire
full-auto, but they did fire as fast as the gun-layer could
press the triggers, and they used quick-detachable magazines that
held enough rounds to blanket
a charging party of witches.” A pause, then, “the usual
for such a gun-siting was to have no less than eight to ten such
dug-in guns, with each gun of that battery connected to the central
observation point by field-telephones.”

“Hence en-masse fire,” I said.

“And vast numbers of dead
witch-soldiers,” said the soft voice. “The common soldiers
commonly did a bit better as they tended to neither charge in vast
'masses' nor did they stand out so much when they did move.”

“If these guns are what I am
thinking about,” said Sarah, “then they still killed them
in droves.”

“True, they did,” said the soft
voice. “More, that general type of gun has seen a lot
of improvements since then, as it's still
thought to be an especially capable weapon overseas.”

“For putting
down, uh, uprisings?” I asked. “Leaves massive numbers of bodies
everywhere, and only needs three functionaries to crew the thing –
or do they do that any more?”

“Not recently,”
said the soft voice. “They've gotten really rusty with
those things, and those functionaries currently tend to use
less-capable weapons when they go out for 'sport'.”

“So if one
shows, put a rocket into it,” said Sepp.

“No,” I said
deadpan. “Shoot the functionaries on it and give the other
functionaries hell with it.”

I could almost
hear the chortling, so much so that I nearly did a header over a
tipped-into-the aisle bin next to a cloth-covered pair of pallets.
While I examined the bin in question – it was another fiberglass
one, which meant it did not have things inside it that went 'boom'; I
was catching onto the logic of these long-dead people now – someone
yanked the cloth covering off of one of the pallets, and Sarah's
screech nearly had me dive for the floor behind another pallet.

“I'm not sure I
want to be in one of those things,” she said, “as it would rub me
raw the way it is now.”

“Uh, why,
dear?,” I said, as I levered up the lid of the bin. “Oh, these
things here must be some of those tactile labels.”

“No, Sarah, you
want those at this end,” said Katje. “Now this looks to
be just right for when I must clean house, as it has enough pockets
on it to suit Esther.”

“Best get one
for her, then,” said Sarah – who then said, “no, best not. I
might need to take one that's close for sizing, fit it to her, and
then sew one that looks less like something that looks to be made
specially so as to get the witches onto her.”

“Aren't they
onto that woman enough as it is?” I asked. “If these
things you found are a type of camouflage-clothing, then she might
hide better than she does now.”

“Yes, but not in
a town she won't,” retorted Sarah. “She tends to be in
those most of the time when she's cleaning or getting food.”
Pause, then, “she does tend to travel cross-country when
moving so as to save time, as rides aren't at all common for her.”

“If she
is traveling in the daytime,” said the soft voice in response to
Sarah's talk about custom-fitting Esther with a locally-produced
equivalent garment “and if she's in a witch-run town –
which, while those are currently scarce in the first kingdom, will
attempt to become numerous once more.” Pause. “That is why
she'll want one done like those and a similar copy using
commonplace-color cloth for when she must move about openly in
the daytime where she can be readily observed.”

“She usually
looks like that,” said Sarah. “She may wash what she has
frequently, but she'll still need common cloth...” Sarah then
looked at me, and thought, “no. Not what I can get here for cloth,
but what I can get overseas, and their tools, also. That will work
much better.”

“And make her
much harder to see, also,” said the soft voice. “Get onto
the right people about 'camouflage cloth', and draw for them what she
normally looks like, and you'll have things suitable for her cleaning
suits.”

“Including the
special cloth that goes inside of these things for, uh,
padding,” I said. “Not normal padding, isn't it?”

“No, it isn't,
not even in what you're currently wearing, which is another reason
why you want to wear that stuff when overseas,” said the soft
voice. “Were you to wear such gear outside here, you'd collect a
lot less lead.”

“It does, and
it's quite effective, even given its time of manufacture and how
'little' there is of it,” said the soft voice. “It's almost as
effective as what some soldiers wear where you came from.”

“With almost no
weight to it, and it's not a wearable oven...” There had to
be a catch somewhere, and I knew it. It either didn't do much to
high-velocity fragments or bullets, or there was something else that
I wasn't sure of, even if the stuff was easy to move around
in.

It did work
well that way, unlike what many soldiers supposedly wore where I came
from – and I suspected they'd toss whatever they used now
and use this stuff instead given a choice, even if it didn't work
half as well for protection and they had to pay a high price
for it for it out of their own pockets.

“No, it actually
did help with such missiles,” said the soft voice. “It
made such wounds readily survivable, even if a hit ruined that
part of the garment and repairing such damage was not easy.”
A pause, then, “what it did do was give those trying to
make and repair garments using it absolute fits, at least until the
specially-modified motorized cutters became common things during the
waning years of that war.”

“Scissors?” I
asked.

“Try
poking that stuff with an awl,” said the soft voice. “Your
latest ones will barely make a hole in it, even if you
put some real force into the blow.”

“That would
break one of those things,” said Sepp. “You do not do
that with awls, and that no matter who makes them – and that
Lukas told me.”

“Then why does
he use his to clean ears like he does?” asked Sarah.

“That does not
take much work, unless the awl is a bad one,” said Karl. “His
are not those things, and they are nearly as sharp as sewing needles,
so they just take a bit of poking to go all the way in to the
handle.”

“That, however,
is not the case with that latest tool steel,” said the soft
voice. “You could abuse such an awl and not have it break,
and it would penetrate this version of cloth – if you
worked at it.” A pause, then, “the updated versions of that
cloth need those newer special tools to cut it, unlike
this type – which can be cut with powered shears fitted with
quick-change blades.” The unspoken portion was 'you'll change a
lot of blades if you cut much of it, though, and these blades
aren't easy to sharpen'.

“Th-those..?”

“The new devices
do not use slicing edges or electric motors,” said the soft
voice. “They actually emit a very narrow beam that unravels
the molecules and curls them back onto themselves, so firstly, the
cloth isn't weakened by cutting the fibers, and then they 'cut' that
cloth as fast as one can move them – unlike the motorized cutters,
which are slow enough working with that older material to make for
fuming in the impatient, presuming one uses good blades and
changes them frequently.” Pause, then, “but one trouble,
though.”

“Yes, and what
is that?” asked Karl.

“Those newer
tools produce a very high-pitched screeching noise that causes
witches to have fits and pigs to go deaf at a distance of three
miles,” said the soft voice, “and what they do to people who are
not witches... That, you do not want to know about, unless
you want to be tortured worse than being inside of Frankij
with Dennis when he was driving rivets his fastest.”

“Why?” I
asked. “Earplugs?”

“More like a
sound-absorbing suite,” said the soft voice, “and the work
itself done in a thick-walled and well-padded room specially set up
for cutting the material in question – and both of those things
done on top of clothing similar to what is used to do difficult
surgery in over there.”

“Then we'd best
get some of those things,” said Sepp. I wondered just what he was
talking about, at least at first. “Everyone I've talked to could
hear you for miles when you were riveting that furnace, and
that man Georg is still taking tinctures on account of it.”

“He wakes up
hearing cannons?”

“No, he wakes up
hearing you riveting, which I think he finds to be worse,”
said Sarah. “There. Now this one seems to fit passably.” A
pause, then, “Katje, be careful. I might be as small as a girl
there, but I do have such things, even if I look to be
otherwise for them.”

“That was
another reason why I thought it might be unwise for you two to have
children,” said Katje. “Now I can use one of these garments, but
I had best put labels on it before I get into it, as I cannot
see well enough in here to know I'm putting them right otherwise.”

“As small as a
girl?” I thought.

“It's rather
more and less than you surmised,” said the soft voice. “Rachel,
to put it mildly, is about as 'bulgy' as women get here who are not
about to give birth, assuming they aren't witches – and both male
and female attire is intended for both warmth and concealment,
especially in the first kingdom.” A pause, then, “the chiefest
issue, though, are the differences in size and much else.”

“What?” I
thought.

“The differences
in size and build – and muscle mass – are far less between
the sexes here compared to where you come from, assuming you are not
dealing with witches,” said the soft voice. The term 'sexual
dimorphism' took an entire – and somewhat lengthy and
clumsy-sounding – sentence to say in this language, hence the usage
I was hearing. “Custom, and not capability, restrict
women's duties here – as that country had large numbers of
women soldiers then, and they were fully as capable as the men
were, save in situations where the duties were especially
arduous.”

“Especially
arduous?” I asked.

“Commonplace
front-line duty wasn't nearly that
arduous,” said the soft voice. “Only in a bare handful
of instances were there enough differences to warrant anything
remotely close to what would be thought of as 'sexism' overseas then,
and that was the case for those not
marked.” A pause, then, “with those marked, such
differences in capacity vanished.”

“Then why are
women the only ones chosen over there for medical work?” I thought.

“That is a deep
and dark secret,” said the soft voice, “and the reasons for doing
that have to do with belief, not reality – so you can guess
as to what's likely to be involved at some level.”

“Then I can
speak of it, possibly,” said Sarah. She looked 'dismally
formidable' in her new 'clothing'. I could think of no better
language, even if I had 'stolen' the phrase from recollection – at
least until I saw where she'd put both of those pistols. Their
current locations did not help with the 'formidable' portion of the
description. “They have pockets for these things, and they seem to
work.”

“Keep looking,”
said the soft voice. “There are special 'enclosures' to put those
weapons in, though I would look carefully at those before
thinking to use them, either here or overseas.”

“Uh, why?” I
asked.

“One of the
areas where they really needed to work on such things,” said
the soft voice. “To put it mildly, your pistol holsters
work better than anything of that nature they came up with
during that war, and better than almost anything that is currently
available on the continent – and that no matter where it is
made or who makes it.”

“Yes, they do,”
said the soft voice – who in reiterating the first comment seemed
to remind me of Hans' speech regarding the first one. “They're
fully as durable as what they made then, they protect the weapon in
question nearly as well, they retain them better – and, they
permit quick access should it be needed.” Pause. “The
ones they made did the first two well, the third 'passably', and
those people had trouble getting the fourth part even close to
being right.” A pause, then, “the only area where yours have
anything close to a real weakness is their need to be rubbed
with 'deodorized tallow' or similar materials once in a while to
protect their leather.”

“And that
part about getting one's pistol out quick can keep you alive when
you've got witches trying for you,” said Sepp. “I think we'd
best pass on those things, unless you don't have time to make ones to
fit what we're going to use.”

“Or you can
carry them like Sarah is doing, which is how most people
carried pistols once the 'rumor-mill' got to working hard about how
badly the available holsters actually worked in combat,” said the
soft voice. “The soldiers on the front lines thought it far better
to have a less-secure weapon that could be accessed readily than a
weapon that would not get lost if they had to run for it.” Pause,
then, “still, though – I would try to make some riveted examples
of your holsters if you have the chance before going overseas, as you
will want to use pistols a fair amount – and some small bags
of suitable rivets arrived recently by donkey-train, so those
are not a problem.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sarah.
“I'll try one of those Tossers to see if it tries to escape my
hands, even if I know I'll use these things I have here at least once
on the trip.”

“Yes, dear,” I said. “You may
wish to use one of the smaller pistols, as they, uh, seem fit your
hands well.”

Sarah did
have small hands. Anna's were an easy half-inch wider – and most
women's hands, at least locally, were a bit larger than Anna's, if my
eyes didn't tell lies. Rachel, I wasn't sure, even if her fingers
were longer than most people's I had seen, and that irrespective of
gender.

I knew I
had hands that were a little smaller than average for men, even if I
suspected I had more grip strength than almost anyone I was likely to
meet. My fingers, though – those were the subject of more than one
joke, as their short and stubby aspect had needed Georg's 'gossip' to
silence the talk regarding them.

Sarah looked at me in the strangest
fashion, then reached in another
pocket and pulled out one of the pistols in question. It was one of
those we had found earlier that had been 'gone over' by Rachel's
people. She then looked, and spat, “I knew there had to be cloth
here, as there's a lot of big spools of thread right there in these
racks, and over here are the rolls of cloth!”

“Not just cloth,
either,” said Katje, as she went to the other side of the pallet in
question. “This is enough cloth to stock a place up this way that
sells it, and then there are...” A screech, then, “this is where
I found that rope! There's more of it here, and a lot of it!”

“You'll need to
hunt for the shears, as between the witches and the
theft-leaders for the workers, the shears received about as much
looting as anything in here, those knives included, and the shears
the witches cached went to dust when that deep-hole went – as all
witch-shears were fetishes then and the witches chanted a lot
at those they stole.”

“Except the two
pair that that expert witch hid in his things,” I murmured.
“He didn't chant at his...” I walked to where Katje was, reached
down into a region of darkness between two taller-than-common
fiberglass bins, and pulled out no less than three pairs of shears,
one after another. I handed one of them to Katje. “Now you have a
pair of shears you can actually use.”

Katje was stunned,
and Sarah was equally stunned when I gave her the
second pair. The third pair, I pocketed in what I was wearing. I
surmised one of the strange-looking pockets was intended for such
tools.

“Those other
pairs we can get later,” I murmured. “They'll keep, as I think
we have...” I then took out my pair once more, and in the light of
a lantern – someone else's lantern; I had put mine out – I looked
carefully at them.

“No, I could not
make these, not with that stuff on the edges,” I muttered
upon seeing what looked a lot like a species of marbled
gray-black carbide – carbide that seemed to be 'grown into'
the metal, as I could see nothing like silver or copper, nor even a
perceptible joint. “Ground all over, almost polished in
fact for the handles, and...”

“You'll wish to
oil those before using them, as their bearings are dry,”
said the soft voice. “A drop of 'motor-oil' each time you
pick them up, followed by a careful wiping, and they'll work fine.”

“Why so much
oil?” asked Sarah.

“Because their
bearings aren't sealed, and the lint from some of that cloth
you just found is fairly abrasive, which is why they have special
'hard' edges of a refined species of a material commonly used in
metal-cutting inserts then and now,” said the soft voice.
The implications were obvious to me: regular cleaning of these
shears was a good idea, even more than frequently flushing the
'grit' out of the bearings with motor-oil. “Those will not cut that
armor cloth, by the way, even if they will cut anything else
of a cloth nature found on the continent, even close-woven
double-thick tapestry-cloth.”

“And leather,
even if it's from an elk,” I said.

“Especially
that,” said the soft voice. “Those, as well as one of those
tool-kits they have near where you found those scissors, will speed
up your leatherworking efforts so much that making things out
of leather will take a lot less of your time and effort.”

“Meaning several
holsters for new pistols,” I said.

“You may wish to
take one of the kits and some rough-cut pieces of hide with you on
the trip,” said the soft voice, “and do them during the day or
two you'll have to 'rest' for when you get bored.” A pause,
then, “you'll wish to look at the tents, but I would not bother
taking one of them with you.”

“Why is that?”
said Sepp as I began to look for the kit in question. I could tell
it was neither small nor particularly easy to find, as while the
witches ignored them, the theft-leaders among the workers gave them
as much attention as they possibly could. “We won't use a tent?”

“I think not,”
squeaked Sarah. “We're going to be going without stopping if we
possibly can while at sea, and if that boat goes half as fast
as I suspect it will, we will not be days traveling that
distance.” She then shown her lantern over where I was looking,
and within seconds, I found the bin in question. I was now levering
up its handles, as I could tell this bin had seen no one
inside it since its original packing, even if the other four like it
that had come here had been more or less cleaned out.

“How long,
then?” asked Katje. “I know enough about those navigating texts
to know they're almost entire lies when it comes to distances.”

The lid came up,
and I removed a sizable and somewhat bulky camouflage-colored
'satchel' from among the three that lay within, and saw a
button-closed portion on the outside. Sarah looked on with obvious
interest as I fumbled earnestly with the button, and I could hear her
muttering about people not knowing about buttons and buttonholes.

“Between here
and Norden, that's nothing but the truth,” said the soft
voice. “Between here and the other kingdom ports – that
depends.”

“Depends on..?”
I'd gotten the button loose and was now removing a small softbound
'book'. I had a hunch it would be especially useful.

“If you sail a
ship that's better used as barn-wood for its better portions and
firewood for the balance, do a poor job of sailing it, and
only sail 'from the third unto the ninth hour', then the figures
given are actually pretty close for how long it can take to travel
the distances spoken of,” said the soft voice. “If you've got a
'decent' ship, pay fairly close attention to what you're doing, stick
to familiar waters – those where the winds blow strongest, as a
rule – and sail from first-dawn to just after dusk, it's readily
possible to cut those figures nearly in half.” A pause, then, “if
you sail in one of a handful of boats other than the one which deals
with those people across the sea, though, then you can cut an added
day or more off those figures, as those people don't
stop at night.” A pause, then, “they slacken sail just enough to
stay out of trouble, which isn't all that much as a rule.”

“And what we
shall use?” asked Sarah. She was looking at the book intently, or
so I suspected. I knew I was, as seeing 'how to sew and
repair clothing and equipment' for a title sounded likely indeed.

“Makes all
of those ships seem as if double-anchored at each end, if sailed
correctly,” said the soft voice. “If it's not sailed
correctly, though – it's best to keep it on dry land and take ship
on a common boat, and let someone else who knows what
they're doing do the driving.”

“That is true of
most ships, though,” said Sarah. “How is this one different,
other than it's much smaller and faster?”

“Reaction time,”
I said. “This thing might be tame enough if it doesn't have much of
a wind going, but if there is a wind, it's going to move.”

“I think not,”
said Sarah. “I've seen good sailors work, and those people are
neither sluggish nor slow for thinking, not if they wish to cover
water quickly – and there's two ships that I know of that demand
sailors have a ten-year's time on the water before their masters will
speak to them, and I've ridden in one of those ships.”

“Those
people might manage, given a day's training,” said the soft voice.
“Otherwise, though – for most people who sail, that boat's
a treacherous deathtrap in any real wind at all.”

“Then why are we
taking it?” asked Karl.

“Because you are
not sailors,” said the soft voice, “and then, you have
need of its speed, and there are no suitable ports for
taking common ships closer than your destination – and then
finally, while Gabriel is best suited for helping with the slower
portions of the voyage, all of the rest of you either are
quick enough to avoid trouble with it, or are able to help those who
are.”

“That means
three of us,” said Sarah.

“No, Karl can
do his share of both driving and navigating, provided he's
well-rested, pays close attention to what he's doing, and doesn't try
to go 'as fast as possible',” said the soft voice. “Only if it
really starts to blow will that boat become truly 'dangerous'
to handle.”

“Which means me
doing the business then, most likely,” I said. “Now am I being
presumptuous?”

“No,” said the
soft voice. “Remember what you used to drive, and just how tricky
it could be when pressed to its limits?”

“What was this?”
asked Sarah.

“Something that
some few tapestries have only hinted at, and that
obliquely,” said the soft voice. “Recall mention of those cursed
vehicles you found parts to? Those 'advertisements' you-all have
seen?”

Sarah – and I
suspect everyone other than me – nodded.

“He could drive
one of those,” said the soft voice, “and more, press the vehicle
to its absolute limits.”

“N-no,”
squeaked Sarah in disbelief. “One of th-those things?”

“It might take
him some time to get used to it,” said the soft voice – “or at
least, it would have taken him some time to learn its handling traits
and other matters important to achieving the vehicle's maximum
performance before he came here.” Pause, brief as a breath.
“Now it would be different, and not a little different.”

“Not with you
driving it, it wouldn't,” said the soft voice. “More than one
marked person stole one of those things and then drove it out of the
city and nearly to the southwestern border regions of that country –
and while they were driving it, no one – and I mean no one –
could catch them. Only if they were being followed by aircraft could
they be kept up with, and that if they kept to the 'main'
highways.” A pause, then, “they usually didn't, which meant they
would drive at or near the vehicle's top speed until they could
'ditch' the thing close enough to the border so as to not alert the
border guards due to the engine noise.” Another pause, then,
“they'd cross during the earliest hours of darkness, and usually be
'long gone' by first morning light.”

“Just like
firing one of those accursed fetish-grade machine-guns,” I
muttered. “Now where are those things in here?”

“Not in this
area,” said the soft voice. “You've got about ten minutes until
you'll need to spend some time in that privy, so I would get things
organized as much as you can in this area so the others can do
what they can do while you're in there.”

“And you will
wish to keep breathing what you are using,” said Sarah. “If I
must spend time in that stinky place, I will wish the use of one
also.”

While Sarah and I
'made ready' – me getting the vest off, mostly – I gave
instructions to Katje as to what to look over, and more, what to
watch out for as being especially needful. While I thought I
had been thorough enough in what I had said, I could feel –
this plainly, even as I squirted repeatedly while sitting on the
stool and all but moaned in the darkness – that I might as well
have been speaking a totally foreign language, one needing a
different mind and different thought-processes so as to comprehend my
speech; and that nothing of note would be done while I was
gone. I soon learned the truth of the matter when I heard Sarah
faintly yelling.

“I thought so,”
I muttered. “I need to be out there every single minute so as to
keep them out of trouble...”

“Katje could not
read your notes,” said the soft voice, “and while she did
hear you, and that clearly, she's almost totally lost as to what's
needed for the trip.”

“Which was just
what I was afraid of,” I muttered.

“Sepp has a much
better idea, and Sarah's yelling because she's having trouble getting
out of that harness,” said the soft voice. “Both of those two men
are learning very fast about important matters that will be
crucial during the trip and after, and both Maarten and Katje are
getting some swift lessons about 'fighting thugs' from what they're
seeing being gathered.” A pause, then, “still, you will
have to straighten matters out to some degree, so your time in
here isn't 'wasted utterly'.”

“I needed to go
badly anyway,” I squeaked, as another gout of 'hot-smelling' dung
came out. “Why is it I can smell this stuff so readily?”

“That is
something unique to those who have 'strong markings',” said the
soft voice, “though when Sarah tries this privy, she'll get an idea
of what you speak of when you mention still being able to smell
matters.”

I finished my
'spewing' and resumed my clothing; and the minute I went out of that
'black hole', Sarah went inside. I had not gone three steps from the
door when I heard muttering, this being, “I am glad he's getting
help soon, as this stink is worse than that time I rode a smelly
mule!”

“Me?” I
thought, as I moved toward 'the gathering mess'.

“Not just you,
even if your 'stench' is much of what she's smelling,” said
the soft voice. “She is right about needing help, though.”

The 'mess',
however, was mostly a matter of a quick checking-over of what had
been haphazardly put aside and then a quick loading of a cart, this
full enough to make Maarten grunt when he got it moving. Katje
yelled after him to dose its bearings with oil as he vanished into
the darkness with that one turned-down tent-lantern to light his way
and the rope someone had paid out for a guide, and as I continued to
'gather' small and medium-sized thread-spools and stuff them into one
of the larger pouches I had emptied of rust, I could hear
quick steps coming from the direction of the privy.

“Best let her do
this part,” I thought, as I put the thread-pouch aside for Sarah.
“She knows this stuff better than I do.” I then found a sizable
'tin' of needles, and stuffed it in the pouch. I knew
something about those.

“Were it thread
made here, that would indeed be the case,” said the soft voice.
“Your selection, while quite useful both here and overseas,
will cause her no end of confusion between what is in that
sewing kit and how that thread behaves.” A pause, then, “at
least, it will do that for a short time.”

“The colors?”
I asked. I did not ask about the needles, even if I wondered
if bright-needles were really that much better than the
several sizes and types of the 'common' ones I had some small store
of in my workbench. I thought to borrow one of Sarah's
'bright-needles' and try sewing some cloth with it, in fact – as
Sarah had understated the cost-difference, if I went by what I had
learned by asking those people I had seen. Lukas had been especially
outspoken, and said he didn't bother hunting up 'them things what
cost like they're made out o' glass-blower's wire'.

Then again, he
didn't sew for a living, and Sarah did. In her case, the
slight lessening of drag when sewing a mass of common fabric
into a garment might well cut hours off of a long and tedious
job – hours that most likely added up when one sewed for a living
and had to walk long distances between paying jobs as Sarah had
needed to.

“You probably
did better than I could,” said Sarah as she came up. “I left
that mask outside the door for whoever must use that thing next, as
while you made it smell terribly, I did not help it much.”

“Mr. and Mrs.
Stinker,” I thought. “We could pass for stinkers, at least
in one way.”

“Not quite,”
said the soft voice. “Neither of you smell that bad – and
'wind' is a common trouble overseas, so much so that jokes are
endemic about it.”

“What?” I
asked. “Poor diet?”

“Their diet
makes what Sepp dished up seem an utter delicacy,” said the soft
voice, “and that for both its flavor and its tendency toward
'griping' – and 'griping' due to bad food is a major problem
over there among the 'commons', one for which there's little
treatment currently available and less-yet excuse permitted.”

“That...”

“I found the
tents,” said Katje, “and while they do look likely, I am not sure
I think it wise to use them much.”

“Uh, why?” I
asked.

“You'd need to
hide these things in a haystack to not get witches onto you,” said
Katje, “either that, or hide them good in a woodlot.”

“They usually
did,” said the soft voice, “and that for the reasons that
occurred to you.”

“Because the
witches would see them especially?” I asked. “Especially those
shiny metal poles?”

“Those went
inside the tent, so they didn't show, and that fabric is
camouflage-print,” said the soft voice. “Now, think. What
attracts witches?”

“Anything that
looks different from which they themselves think they wish to see,”
I said, “which means to show a tent anywhere in the first
kingdom means 'you're going to have a mob chain you up and soak you
with distillate before putting the torches to you'.”

“While that
would not happen now, due to the scarcity of witches and
supplicants,” said the soft voice, “the results of using those
tents during that war were such that they were taken home quickly
and their fabric used to make smaller items.” A pause, then, “they
used common gray-green cloth afterward for what tents they made, as
it showed up a lot less; and within a short time after that, they
usually 'mud-washed' the tents after assembling them unless they
could hide them especially well – and mounds of brush
smeared liberally with mud, especially in 'torn up' terrain, worked
well for disguising them.”

“Infrared
emissions,” I muttered.

“No, not just
that,” said the soft voice. “Think again. How many things do
you commonly see in or around woodlots that look like small
houses? Even if they're a dappled green-brown color?”

“N-none,” I
muttered. That one witch-hut had been the sole exception I had
actually seen thus far, as Hans' talk of those things being used by
'tramps' had been corrected by Sarah's speech on the matter – and
more, she never went close to such 'witch-sheds', as she had called
them.

“The witches
then had ways of seeing anything that looked 'man-made',”
said the soft voice, “and the ones today, while they don't
have that capacity, until recently did have both a substantial
degree of familiarity with their immediate territories and the
'free time' and numbers to spend a lot of time looking their
environment over on a regular and frequent basis.”

A pause, then,
“and while witches like to use woodlots for camouflage, and
are commonly fairly careless about what they do in those
places they have located inside them, that black book does
have a sizable chapter-group in it about 'how to be invisible in
plain sight' – and between that and the 'gossip' handed down from
arch-witch to arch-witch over many years, they tend to blend in
fairly well unless they're either especially brazen or unusually
careless.”

“Or drunk as
stinkers,” I muttered.

“No, those sober
witches are the ones that have historically located and planned out
such sites, which is one reason why witches have remained so
well-hidden for so long in the five kingdoms.” A pause, then,
“only demonstrating uncommonly brazen behavior or unusual
carelessness caught them out in most places on the continent, at
least until very recently.”

“How recent is
that?” asked Sarah.

“Since about a
month after he came here,” said the soft voice. “The gossip
that's currently going around in witch-circles nowadays is
driving a lot of witches headlong into those newly-available
drugs, not just those coach-drivers that are 'getting used to' being
'higher'.”

“Higher?”
I asked.

“One of those
words that became common to describe witches once the battle started
in earnest here,” said the soft voice. “The word 'High' as used
to describe part-rotten meat is a distant descendant of what
they said of witches then, as are a number of other names and terms
you'll learn in the days to come.”

“And hence they
will be...” I gasped. “No wonder they'll be shooting at
everything that moves! They'll be so stinking paranoid from taking
that stuff that they'll see someone wanting to kill them behind every
bush and tree, and twice that for every house-door!”

“Not quite that
paranoid, but they will become much more so, compared to how
they were before so indulging,” said the soft voice. “They
aren't being dosed like blue-suited thugs overseas, so the effects
won't be quite as profound, and then those drugs are both fairly
costly and somewhat scarce still.”

“Somewhat
scarce?” I asked.

“The witches
wish them to be as readily available as the common flavor of
forty-chain is in a fifth kingdom mining town,” said the soft
voice, “and they're currently about as common where they are being
sold as 'prime datramonium' is right now in the first kingdom.” A
pause, then, “then again, their suppliers are just 'priming the
pump' right now, so those drugs will become much more common
very soon, and then 'competition' between suppliers – once
other manufacturers join in – will drive down the price
rapidly.”

“P-prime
datramonium?” I asked. I wondered at that term, even if I had some
ideas about what would happen to the 'massing witches' that would be
coming up here. Those drugs might be costly now, but these
witches had money to burn – and hence they bought them as
fast as those selling made them available. Making them more
available would only spread that particular net of idiocy and
foolhardiness wider – and it sounded like it would become
much wider fairly quickly.

“I can speak
about that,” said Sarah. “If one wishes to have datramonium that
is fit for conjuring, supposedly, one wishes the stuff to grow in
either a hot and dry climate, or one that is much colder than here,
and the first kingdom is neither of those things, hence the local
stuff isn't thought to be much.” A pause, then, “at least, that
was what I've read in those tales and on those tapestries that speak
of it, and that does not count what I have heard when witches have
spoken of the matter.”

“Then why is –
no, was – that stuff so common in the area?” It needed
skill and knowledge to find datramonium in much of the
first kingdom now, as almost all of the 'usual' bushes had been
doused liberally with lye – and lye didn't just kill the
entire plant within a day or so.

It also made the
dead plant's leaves worthless for witchdom's usage. Since
datramonium seeds didn't easily germinate save in a near-perfect
environment – even Norden had trouble sprouting them –
that meant cuttings had to be first rooted and then hand-carried to
their carefully-selected planting sites, which meant the first
kingdom's supplies of 'domestic' datramonium would be 'far-down' for
some years.

Or in
more-realistic terms, datramonium would be a permanently scarce
commodity in the first kingdom, as witchdom didn't have that
much time remaining, and datramonium didn't grow 'rapidly' until it
was well-established – which usually took at least a year in a good
climate, which the first kingdom did not have.

“Firstly,
Norden's people have brought rooted cuttings with them over the
course of many years, so as to have ample supplies for their
spy-groups,” said the soft voice. “Everyone over there
who isn't a Thinker tends to chew the stuff regularly as well as
drink datramonium tincture when they can, so those spy-groups needed
to both plant a fair amount of it in their areas of operation as well
as harvest the stuff – and they did both of those things as
regularly as they stole food or killed game.” A pause, then, “and
while it's poor stuff compared to what grows at Norden, it
does keep them 'trashed' enough to stay 'well'.” Another
pause, then, “finally, not all covens in the first kingdom had
sufficient money to get 'fifth-kingdom datramonium', much less 'the
good stuff', hence many of the small-timers grew and cured
their 'own', with Norden-planted bushes being preferred for
harvesting when and where they could be located.”

“And now all
of those people have trouble,” said Sepp. “I put lye to three
datramonium bushes myself since the Hall went where it belongs, and I
know of lots of other people who've done as much.”

“Norden's people
are having trouble that way,” said the soft voice. “Most
of their plants have died, and hence only those plants that are
especially well-hid still live.” A pause, then, “those
immigrating witches each have bags of the stuff in their
satchels and more such bags in the coach-boots, as they think to sell
'the good stuff' – as grown and sold in the fifth kingdom – to
those witches that still live up here.”

“Few takers for
it, though,” I said.

“Yes, now,”
said the soft voice. “There's a very good reason that one
big group and most of the other witches coming here believe they can
easily get three or more supplicants for every witch, and that's
because there still remains a fair number of people who can be
readily swayed toward witchdom's ways given sufficient
inducement of the right kind.”

“Where we live?”
asked Sarah.

“There, no,”
said the soft voice. “The only thing those coming witches
want to do with Roos is turn it into a huge smoking hole in the
ground, and the same for a number of other towns as well in the
central portion of the first kingdom, as they know they'll
receive nothing but hot lead in those locations.”

“No, but they do
know about mining dynamite, and they're bringing plenty of
that with them, hence they think to drop off boxes of the
dripping-with-oil stuff along the main street of those towns they
wish to destroy, top each such box with two or more jugs of
distillate, and then put a long fuse to the last such placement in
the row – and then leave in a hurry once that fuse is lit.”

“They'll get
blown up if they try that,” said Sepp. “Someone will put
a bullet into one of those things...”

“Then they'll
all go up one after another, and the exact same thing results,”
said the soft voice, “which is why those particular witches
will be 'dosed heavily' with both drink and those drugs, so
they'll do exactly what they're told with no thoughts
whatsoever in their minds beyond following such orders exactly.”

“Expendables, namely,” I muttered.
“Now our next thing...” I paused, then picked up the
moved-aside lid of a chest-high fiberglass bin, it being the fourth
one on the stack in question. “What are these doing here?”

“They misplaced the smaller and
larger sample pouches,” said the soft voice. “The ones most
commonly used for 'toxic materials' are the size you found
originally, and those are the only ones currently inventoried
overseas.” A pause, then, “they still make all three sizes,
however, even if the medium size is the only one made still in real
numbers.”

While some of each size of pouch were
being collected up – the larger size looked about right for putting
firebombs inside so as to 'coddle them', and the smaller variety good
for 'coddling' a trio of grenades, with both pouches easily carried
by their 'carrying straps', I was after the next thing in this
area. A step to the right, a tall – this untouched by witch
or theft-group – stack, and I pulled down one after another of the
uppermost bins, these all of fiberglass and having definite
'doubled-six' markings prefaced by 'MILNO' molded into their lids and
sides.

“Must have just got out of the
laboratory,” I muttered, as I began popping the latches. “What is
that smell?”

“Cloth-preservative,
which is in a purple-lettered packet similar to the ones you've found
for metal. It may off-gas a lot less than the metal stuff
does, but given the time it's been confined in here, it's had a
chance to do that enough to make for a strange smell.”

“Smells like,
uh, some of Anna's spices, the ones that came home from that latest
trip,” I said.

“She has enough
of most of them now that she will not need to spend another entire
day getting spices anytime soon,” said Sarah, “and somehow, I
rather doubt she will ever do so again.”

“How is it you
know that?” said Katje.

“Because
something will happen to all of us,” said Sarah. “I recall
something about one dream I had recently, and I did not much care for
it.”

“What, dear?”
I asked.

“There is much
that I cannot recall of my childhood, especially the earlier
portions,” she said, “but this showed me what it actually was
like, and a great deal more than that as well, almost as if I had to
give an account before God where nothing whatsoever was hidden
from either him or me.”

“They discerned
much of that information when you bathed, dear, and it was not
held against you in the slightest,” said the soft voice. “In
fact, it redounded to your benefit, as nearly anyone else would have
become unfit for what you're about to do.”

“Including me,”
I muttered. I was getting an idea as to what this might have been.
Evil stepparents could be great trouble, and that was if they
were merely 'evil' and not frankly murderous like my 'first'
stepfather or younger brother. I'd read about being 'pursued with
drawn sword' in the book some years before he actually did
what I had merely read of earlier, and that shotgun and lead-loaded
club of my stepfather's were just waiting for an excuse to be
used.

“Not like what
you had,” said the soft voice. “Had she endured what you
did, she would have died by the time she was ready to leave
the lower schools, and more, she could – and did with great
frequency – escape to the safety of her relatives. You had no
such option, and had you attempted leaving, you would have been
killed by slow torture by that man, as he would have forgotten all
of his trickery and his sadism would have then become the
foremost thing in his mind.”

“I thought so,”
said Katje. “I hope those witches don't mind going to Brimstone's
dinner plate in vast swarms, as anyone who endured forty years at a
place fully as bad as Berky during its worst time isn't going to be
one...” Katje looked at me, and then seemed to faint. “That's
why you're so sick. You spent forty years in the closest thing to
hell that exists outside of the place itself!”

“And Berky,
while it thought itself to be hell upon this planet, did not deign to
live up to that place's evil,” said Sarah, “for that place would
have devoured both those witches and their slaves, and that
quickly.”

Sarah then bent
down to look at what I was 'pawing through', and removed one of the
packets. The thing was, as seemed usual, 'camouflaged', and when she
opened the slim pouch, the amount of 'clothing' she pulled out of it
seemed a complete marvel. It folded down to almost nothing,
much like a 'smock' Mrs. Ulyanov had sewn for me to wear over my
clothing for when it rained and I needed to ride my bicycle, this
during periods of unemployment when saving money took precedence over
saving time. Rain, at least during the lengthy winters in that
place, was not at all rare; and a quickly-donned garment of
compact-folding nature was a real plus. The thing's color
helped some also, as she'd picked that color especially so as
to help when I strayed from the roads and traveled along the narrow
'bush' tracks between paved routes to save time and avoid harassment.

“This is a
larger size,” she said. “Look in there for a female's small, if
there is one to be found.”

I began looking
once more, but within moments, I had help, this by everyone who could
fit themselves into the small space where the original three bins and
several more were on the floor. It took Katje to find one fit for
Sarah, who by the time I'd found the ones for 'male large', had me
turn to see Sarah 'completely kitted out' in 'sleeves', a
green-brown-gray face-covering that showed nothing save her eyes, and
another garment covering all else that went nearly to her feet, this
being a special 'cloak' of an oddly conformal nature. I thought to
touch the fabric – and then hugged her unabashedly, rubbing my face
against her head.

“You feel lovely
in that, dear,” I said. The cloth was delightful to feel, even in
my gloves. It was not 'hard' like ripstop nylon, but much 'softer' –
which I imagined helped its camouflage capacity to no small degree.

“How?” asked
Sarah, as I unclenched her.

“It's very, uh,
'slippery', just like that one fabric that I was asking those witches
to receive,” I asked. “That has an even better feel to it
than this.” I then had a question. “Those female witches?”

“Have either
shot themselves or have taken poison, with almost no
exceptions,” said the soft voice, “and the sole exception cut the
clothing off of herself with a knife.” Pause, then, “she won't
last long, not with how much she sliced herself with that thing, and
her 'keeper' tied her hand and foot before wrapping her in a thick
and muffling laced-up up fabric 'sleeve'.”

“And that wretch
is now en-route to the nearest witch-hole so as to sacrifice that
'traitor to the cause',” I muttered. “That sort of behavior is
not acceptable in witchdom, man or woman, and the others did
the appropriate things for those chosen as 'Brimstone's
special meat'.” A pause, then, “witches do not tolerate
failure of any kind, especially when you're that high
up.”

“That can be
said for nearly all witches today, regardless of ranking or
income-status,” said the soft voice. “All sizes of that black
book speak at length of how failure to perform in any aspect, no
matter how slight, demonstrates conclusively that any person
not measuring up to the will of his or her superior has 'become evil,
and is therefore Disgraced, and that by their knowing and willful
choice'.”

“Witches think
that of everyone not them,” said Sarah, as she began to
remove her camouflage clothing. “Karl, you want this stuff to fit
you especially well, and we will wish its use until we are most of
the way south.”

“Until you're
well within an hour's easy sailing of the port, in fact,”
said the soft voice, “as that boat, when traveling at a decent
speed, makes for damp traveling.”

“Unless it's
'flying',” I said. “It isn't damp then.”

“Yes, but then
it will be very cold due to the wind, and that clothing blocks
wind as well as rain,” said the soft voice.

“How will it be
cold that far south?” asked Sarah.

“Because then
you will be traveling as fast as a wood-pigeon,” said the soft
voice. “You'd best dose Gabriel good before you try that,
as he will not enjoy such a ride.” The unspoken portion, I
could surmise readily: Gabriel needed something to happen to him
of a truly serious nature before he'd accept traveling much
faster than the 'commonplace' speeds on land or water, and
forget imitating a low-flying aircraft – as only witches
were permitted such things, and he knew that better than
almost anyone who yet remained in the house proper – or indeed, in
most of the first kingdom's central region.

I then knew the
area in question was bigger than what I had thought it to be, and
Gabriel's attitude, for one supposedly not inclined toward becoming a
witch, was most likely worse than I thought. It made for my next
question.

“Dose him with
what?” I asked. “A lead-loaded club, or an entire tube of
Sarah's latest batch?”

“When you make
up some more of that stuff, make two more vials of her
mixture, and let those vials be large ones well-padded with
rags and placed in leather pouches plainly labeled as to their
contents,” said the soft voice, “and then make up a much smaller
vial, one containing much more of the bull-formula and three
times as much of the tincture for pain.”

“And I shall
dose him with that stuff, so that he does not cause us trouble when
matters become overly frightening,” said Sarah. “He will sleep
as if Anna were to do surgery on him, almost.”

“No, not quite,
even if he will be deeply asleep and remain so 'for the
duration',” said the soft voice. “Anna's dosing of people that
way takes no small amount of skill, and more than once during her
early years in medicine, she had to douse a person's body with
aquavit and set them alight so they didn't die.” A pause, then,
“read the manual for that clothing which is found in the center
container of the first three containers he took down – it's near
the bottom. It's another 'early escape' written by people who were
then dealing with those people from Norden.”

I found the
article in question, even as Sarah helped Katje and then Maarten get
themselves into such camouflage clothing. Unlike the others in the
group, they'd be able to use such clothing almost daily while
we were gone, as it would help them get around without being
observed during their trips to and from the nearest towns; and more,
they could now travel armed without it being obvious to any
watch-witches in the area provided they were so clothed.

The
clothing would go in their packs as soon as they came close to a
town, and their weapons, these then in plain sight, would most likely
be taken as 'short muskets' of a strange species. It was well-known
in the area that I had done some of those weapons for the house
proper, and I did
experiment with guns and other weapons – hence they had inbuilt
'plausible deniability', at least in the short term.

The manual in question – again,
nonprofessional-looking, the cover done with 'felt-tip pen and
crayon' in ragged-looking bleeding-into-one-another stripes, with a
slick and shiny plastic-feel surface – was thicker than the last
one. This example was mostly pictures, save for about three pages of
text. The text spoke of the light-trapping nature of what was named
'semi-active' camouflage, with one of the smaller pictures showing
how the weave of the cloth, as well as the paint-like nature of the
dyes, actually 'caught' certain discrete colors of light to a varying
degree, depending upon the intensity of that light. It made sense,
even if the explanation seemed convoluted, with a distinct aura of
'we barely have an idea as to how this works, so this is the
current theory'.

The
second and third pages dealt with how and where to use such
camouflage clothing, this being in low-light conditions and
preferentially in forested regions, where it not merely helped the
wearer to blend into the background, but seemingly affected the
vision of the observer such that the wearer seemed to be harder to
locate precisely. That portion segued into an addendum upon the last
page, this faintly overstamped with a series of dot-separated
pinkish-red letters on a green-flecked background that I could barely
make out.

That was not the case for Sarah: “that
meant they were trying to keep it a secret, supposedly.”

“Tapestries?” I asked.

“The one I had to bathe for,” said
Sarah. “Now... They were trying to make this stuff work better,
or so it seems, though how to make it change like that of some
strange fourth-kingdom lizard I've seen three or four times is beyond
me.”

“Lizard?” I asked. “I've never
seen one – here or there.”

“There, I am not surprised, as they
hide so well you need to not merely be in an area where they are very
common, but also know when, where, and what to look for,” said
Sarah. “Lizards only show themselves up here during periods when
it's relatively warm, so I'm not surprised you haven't seen one.”

“Those things hide good,” said
Karl. “I have only seen one of them.”

“You've not looked very hard, then,”
said Sarah. “If you look at the walls in back of houses on the
sunny sides during the morning hours of the beginning parts of
summer, they aren't hard to find if you move quietly and slowly.”

“And the rest of the year?” I
asked.

“They tend to stay in
those walls a lot more,” said Sarah, “and when it is cool enough
to be want warm clothing again, they're more or less not to be found,
save in a very few
places.” A pause, then, “I've found two such places in this part
of the first kingdom, both of them near well-hidden springs that are
warm year-round.” Pause, then, “I have bathed in them many
times, though I was careful to not foul such springs with soap.”

“Do they winter
there?” asked Katje.

“I think some
do, but most of them either eat themselves fit to burst upon insects
and then sleep the cold season in the ground, or I suspect they crawl
inside of homes,” said Sarah. “I've not seen one in a
home, but I have found signs of them being present many
times.”

My reading of the
very last paragraph upon page three, though, hinted obliquely of some
'better' and more capable camouflage clothing under development. For
some reason, however, I suspected strongly that the writers of this
document were privy to some of that secret research involving
the increased capacity of those who had been 'repaired' by medical
technology, and that provided much of the increased capacity for
hiding.

“Absolutely
true,” said the soft voice. “The writers were told no more than
what you are reading there, and that was before 'the wall of secrecy'
came down in earnest.” Pause, then, “once that happened, no one
knew anything more than absolutely necessary to do their
assigned tasks, with the ostensible reason being denying the
enemy information if and when people were captured.” I clearly
heard the emphasis upon that word 'ostensible', and knew that there
was more to the matter than what those hearing such words were
actually told – something about ignorant subjects being easier
to rule.

“Those people
didn't capture their enemies,” said Sarah. “If they did,
they killed them by eating them while still alive.”

“And asking them
questions between sawing off portions of fresh meat,” said the soft
voice. “Between effectual curses, various 'seasonings' – drugs,
to be precise, these to increase the pain and suffering of the person
being both sacrificed and devoured – and some very
sophisticated data-collection facilities, those soldiers the witches
captured while still in a position to speak tended to yield up what
information they happened to possess – hence it soon became a
command necessity to keep them as much in the dark about all
matters as was possible.”

“And they tended
to kill themselves if they had the chance,” I muttered. At least
that seemed the case if what I had been told about saving one's last
bullet for oneself regarding Tosser pistols.

“True, many
did,” said the soft voice, “but not all of them had the
opportunity or the courage to do so – and those people died slowly
while under torture.”

“Probably put
the screws to those hearing their screams,” I muttered.

“Yes, when they
could be heard,” said the soft voice. “The witches
usually did their business of that nature during their
specified mealtimes, and their meals were usually well out of earshot
of the enemy.”

“Mealtimes?” I
asked.

“Those were at
night, if one speaks of the witches of that time,” said Sarah.
“Those that were not full witch-soldiers ate but once a day, as
they thought fighting on an empty stomach gave them strength.”
Sarah thought this utter foolishness, and I was inclined to agree.
We then heard the truth.

“Among those yet
weak among them, yes,” said the soft voice. “There weren't many
of those people in the beginning, and they usually became
meals for the stronger witches within a matter of days of their
arrival, at least until the Mistress of the North began running
matters entirely.”

A pause, this to
emphasize those changes enacted by that enigmatically-strange and
hideously-cruel woman so as to win her battles at any and all costs.

“Then, meals
only happened during the hours of darkness, they were all
ceremonial in nature, and those witches did fight
better on an empty stomach, due to their being sustained to a far
greater degree by their steadily-enlarging droves of indwelling
spirits.” A further pause, then, “that basic idea, while it is
present in the larger black books, is conveniently ignored in most
locations upon the continent.”

Another pause,
then: “it is not ignored overseas, and the long-standing
rule for blue-suited thugs is but one meal a day, at least
during their training period and their initial assignments.”

“Those thugs
that go beyond that level learn to eat more often,” I said.

“True, they do,”
said the soft voice. “Most of those thugs that no longer dress that
way eat as is the usual for those they mingle among so as to blend in
better.”

“And next, we
have those pistol holsters we were told about as to their tendencies
to cause trouble,” I murmured, “and while that is true
enough, there are other things of a worthwhile nature in those
pallets' bins.”

“What would
these be?” asked Sepp. Karl had gone back to fetch another cart,
and in the process learn what was keeping Maarten from a speedy
return.

“Belt-pouches,
for one thing,” I said softly, “and then these strange
quick-buckling belts of some kind that can pass for elk-leather but
aren't that stuff, and...”

“I hope they are
not rotten-leather,” said Sarah. I wondered what she meant,
at least until I recalled hearing of 'bad' leather at home regarding
belts. That stuff sounded like what Sarah was speaking of.

“We have not
seen anything of leather down here,” said Sepp, “unless we
brought it our-own-selves, and none of that stuff is rotten.
I rub mine every ten days by the count with that tallow doesn't
stink, and I use a peg-board and carved pins to tell me when it is
ten days past – and Karl rubs his whenever he sees me doing
so, and with the same stuff I use.”

“Peg-board and
p-pins?” I asked. I had wondered, this on a number of occasions,
just how people who were most-busy with non-farming matters
kept track of time from one day to the next.

I could not do so
to save my life, and I usually needed either Anna or Hans telling
me ahead of time when a rest-day happened so as to get my clothing
laid out and ready for 'church-day' the evening of that rest-day.

“That's the only
way I know of that you can tell when you're not a farmer and out in
the fields a lot,” said Sepp. “They may have better ways
elsewhere, but getting those things done is no trouble.”

“That may be
true, but up here it needs you knowing of a good carpenter's
shop,” retorted Sarah.

“Those people
who do boats have some people who've made lots of them,”
said Sepp, “and that's the best carpentry-shop up this way, if what
I have heard is the truth.” He turned, then yelled into the
darkness, “Karl! Get onto Maarten and tell him to move his rump
back here as if he was hot-dancing on falling bricks!”

“What?” I
gasped. This time, I could not keep the surprise out of my voice,
try as I might.

“What happened
at the hall,” said Sepp. “Now that will be in our old
tales, and they will be a right match for those tales what most
everyone knows good. Give them a year, if that, and then everyone
will know about that mess and how bad it was.”

“The witches
already do,” said Katje, “and...”

Katje had stopped
speaking, for I had found what I had been after: the trio of pallets,
these replete with the 'gear of war', and as I began to pull down
fiberglass bins with an assurance that seemed overwrought with
presumption, I heard faint murmurings that steadily increased in
volume. After the tenth such bin – it was a lot heavier than any
fiberglass bin I'd hefted yet, so much so that I wondered just what
it had inside it – I turned around to hear speech of such
peculiarity that it made me wonder if we all needed to wear
oxygen masks while down here.

I did not wonder
about the two quick-coming carts. Maarten had been 'affected' by
intense hunger, as well as thirsty once he'd gotten his stint of
cart-hauling done, and he'd been dosing himself with beer and a slice
of bread when Karl found him.

“No, that thing
wasn't a slice of bread, but closer to half a loaf, and that with
cheese put on with a big spoon,” said Karl. “Now I heard talk of
belts over this way when I was going after him, and I have had enough
of rotten-leather to last me a ten-year, so I hope these are better.”

“The stuff that
is – no, was done – where you live, correct?” I asked.
This one was a stretch for me. “The place smells like he
stabled stinky mules in it...”

Karl looked at me
in horror, then nodded slowly.

“And if you'd
looked closer... No, that's not an easy trick, either. He had these
tall walls of part-dressed wooden poles, each of them as big
as the upper part of my arm for the thinner ends, and behind them
thick rock walls done up with lots of mortar...”

“Karl, that
wretch was no tanner,” spat Sarah. “You were getting your
leather from a well-hid witch, as I've been by that place enough to
know about it.” Then, in lower voice, “I've a mind to put some
soot on that wretch in town, as he must be using recipes out of the
black book for what he does.”

“Close in
concept, even if that man wants nothing to do with witchdom,”
said the soft voice. “To put it mildly, enough tanners have had
witches for masters while being apprenticed that good leather
tends to either need unusual care in its selection...”

“Or no mule-dung
in the vats that take the hair off,” I spluttered. “Only
pig-slime is worse for ruining that stuff, and then cleaning leather
with bad lye makes it grab and hold onto dirt worse than
anything.”

“And
rouge-paste, and the other materials used for buffing,” said the
soft voice. “Tan-bark is scarce enough up here that you'll be glad
when those people come with their materials.”

“Tan-bark?” I
asked. “Needs to be, uh, pulverized in a big mortar and pestle,
cooked over a slow fire in an oven to a crumbly dryness before
it gets boiled, then a slow fire under the vats with the bark being
thick enough in those things to make them look as if they'd eat
spoons.”

“Which is how
leather is done in the better fourth kingdom shops,” said Sarah.
“Should he do worse than he's done recently, I've a mind to fetch
my own tan-bark and cook my own hides.” A pause,
then, “I know where some of those trees are up here, and while they
aren't that common, I can find more of them easily
enough.”

“And Hans
scrapes hides well,” I said. “Now, a little potash in that
'stew' – you want it nearly as thick as Anna's stew when she's run
short of marmot or dried meat and is using potatoes to substitute for
the meat – then, perhaps a dilute solution of slow-boiling
lye for a half-turn of a glass afterward...”

“I think I had
best set with you for an hour after this mess with my ledger in hand
and three close-sharpened writing dowels, as you're speaking of
matters that I've but suspected and could never prove.”

“About what?”
asked Maarten. He was out of breath, and was next to Katje as Sepp
showed her how to first feel around a bin for 'trapping' and
then open it easily.

“About how
leather suitable for sealing joints is done,” said Sarah. “It
works for much more than just seals in machinery – it works
well in general, and the only reason they don't go to that much
trouble for all leather things down there is...”

“Ignorance,
cost, and speed,” I muttered. “Ignorance, as even the central
portion of the fourth kingdom has a lot of ignorant
tanners...”

“Those tanners
who are not witches, yes,” said the soft voice. “Ignorance,
however, is most-common for those running tan-works on the
continent.”

“Cost, because
time is money and some of those supplies aren't cheap,” I said, as
I continued pulling boxes. It was making me wish for a small
'evidence camera', one like the one that I had used for keeping track
of what I did to those things I worked on before coming here. It was
a discontinued model, one of those rare chances that came my
way perhaps once a year during the better years, and while it was
small, it was passable for capability. “Then, doing leather right,
especially if it's thick stuff like what larger elk have, takes a
while to do, so it's commonly stinted as to time and the stuff goes
rotten in a hurry.”

“Your
information will take the time portion of the matter and trim
it markedly,” said the soft voice. “However, if you can
find 'tanning salts' over there, it will produce leather unlike any
seen here since the war.”

“Why?” asked
Sarah.

“The
common means of tanning produces a stiffer leather, unless one works
warmed tallow or a mixture of beeswax and tallow into it with an
oven-warmed 'shoemaker's copper',” said the soft voice, “and the
only alternatives at this time are to do what you did to your
gloves, if you wish gloves that work well.” A pause, then,
“imagine hide the thickness of a winter-deer's that's soft, supple,
tough, and nearly any color you might wish – including patterned
colors that neither move nor fade readily.”

“We might want
that,” I muttered, as I came to a bin. This one wasn't all that
heavy, and when I dropped it to the floor, I levered its lid up right
away. The sight that greeted me was stunning.

“No, I think
not,” I said solemnly. “These things look good enough for
'ceremonies', and are worthless for fighting.” I then
squeaked, “what did I say?”

“Some of the
witches hid their 'gun-holders' in here,” said the
soft voice, “as it seemed a good place to prevent their theft –
and your take on how those actually worked is giving them credit they
do not deserve.”

“What are they,
fetishes?” asked Sarah. She was moving rapidly, or as rapidly as
could be managed given the preponderance of floor-blocking bins that
lay in the aisles around the three pallets. “I can tell these
belts are not those, even if they are the strangest things I
have ever seen, and they look and feel too much like leather for me
to tell the difference.”

“They are not
leather,” intoned Katje. “This card names them woven, and they
don't go rotten, they stand water well, and...”

Katje's voice was
drowned out by Sarah reaching my side, and when she took one look at
what I had found, she turned aside and spat as if she'd had lessons
from Lukas. “I-I've s-seen p-p-pictures of that stuff there, and
only a witch would wish such things.”

“Then why is
this stuff not glowing red?” I asked. “Was it merely 'nominally'
cursed – copies of 'the bad stuff' made in the green area by people
who needed 'hard' currency and knew that making this stuff was
one of the few reliable ways they had of getting it?”

“Correct,”
said the soft voice, “and the witches handling it died hundreds of
years ago, so it's good for note-taking on what not to do, and
that for leather or any other materials that might come to mind.”
A pause, then, “I'd look at them briefly, then toss a
cloth-preservative pouch in that bin with them and close the lid,
afterward marking it with chalk as being 'evidence'.”

“Why, other than
what we might learn from them?” asked Sarah – who then showed me
what looked to be a plastic-and-cloth pistol holster, one that looked
at once alien-looking and yet familiar in its slightly mottled
gray-green 'splattered' with brighter and darker green flecks. It
made me hope to find an airbrush, or failing that, make one. I
recalled to some degree how they worked, having had a pair of them at
one time.

“That
scheme of camouflage would work well today,” I said. “I think we
could do that one easily.”

Sarah looked at
me, then nodded – until she attempted to remove a recently-inserted
Tosser pistol from the thing. The pistol had been setting a while in
a can, if I went by its seeming film of faint 'varnish', while the
holster seemed 'just-made'. The pistol did not wish to come
out, and only with a faint muttered oath and about thirty seconds of
pulling, shifting, tugging, and then a final jerk did the weapon come
free.

“You'd be dead
ten times over with a hungry holster like that one,” said Sepp
laconically. “I'll stick to his, at least for the holsters. These
belts are strange enough for a headache, even if they feel so much
like good elk-leather that I can't tell them apart 'cept for the
colors they have.”

“Uh, not that
usual nice brown color that comes with rubbed-in tallow-and-beeswax?”
I asked.

Sepp nodded, then
said, “no, it's green – and not a solid green, but that
black-edged three-shades-of-green that can't make up it's mind as to
what color it wishes to be.”

“Do they work,
though?” I asked.

“They do,”
said Katje. “There are three sizes of them, and I'll wish two for
me and three for Maarten, as he tends to lose belts unless they are
tied to his trousers.”

“Given that most
trousers don't have belt-loops here, I'm not surprised,” I thought.
“Mine do, at least the cloth ones, but that's because they're
either greens or Sarah's made them to the same or similar patterns.”
I then screeched, this audibly: “what?”

“Trousers, at
least in the fourth kingdom, use belt-loops to hold one's belt where
it belongs,” said the soft voice, “and if she knew how to drive
leather-rivets passably, she'd do them of leather, same as they're
commonly done down there.” A pause, then, “she did copy
down the dimensions the house proper used and changed them slightly
for a better fit, which is why your more-recent greens are better
than your earlier ones.”

“Did those
rivets spoken of come up here in a tinned condition?” I asked.

“They were made
at Machalaat Brothers,” said the soft voice, “and those are not
'common' rivets, but 'best-plus' grade, which is about as good
as you can find on the continent – and yes, they were indeed
tinned.” A pause, then, “though if you can get those you found
in here tinned before you go, they'd actually work slightly
better.”

“Uh, why?” I
said. This time I managed to keep my mouth shut.

“Those are
'electro-copper' rivets, not 'thrice-refined' fire-copper,” said
the soft voice, “and if you want copper, silver, gold, and a number
of other materials to be truly well-behaved, then you want
them processed by electrolysis as a final step.” A pause, then,
“Georg wants that kind of copper, but his suppliers cannot
get it in quantities beyond the most-trivial, so he gets 'best-grade'
stuff from the fourth kingdom when he cannot select it himself
locally.” Another pause, then, “he usually does select
the stuff himself when he can find the time, because he's long known
about the better outcomes when using 'good' copper.”

“Uh, why?” I
asked. “Electrolysis mills aren't common there?” I meant
down in the central portion of the fourth kingdom.

“No,” said the
soft voice. “Outside of a handful of jewelers, no one does
electrolysis-refining work on the continent, due to a lack of
effectual electrical gear capable of generating the needed current.”
A pause, then, “the Valley does a fair amount of such work,
which is one of their chief articles of trade, both between the
various settlements and the outside 'world'.” Another pause, then,
“they aren't the only ones who do electrolysis processing.”

“Ploetzee?” I
asked.

“Could tin those
rivets readily in a day's time,” said the soft voice, “and
they do a deal of electrolysis work there.”

“Copper?” I
asked.

“Several pounds
a week,” said the soft voice. “It tends to need careful
shipment, as that stuff looks different enough from best-grade
thrice-refined fire-copper to make it stand out like a sooted-up
gun.”

“Th-that
little?” I gasped. This time it was audible.

“That isn't
a trivial amount for those locations that electrolyze metals other
than silver,” said the soft voice. “The only place that does
much more copper that way is the Heinrich works, and their
electro-copper isn't sold as such, but is directly processed into
those parts that need its various 'qualities'.”

“And we shall
need to set up a lot of such tanks,” I muttered, as I
returned to what I was doing, that being pulling bins. “Big ones,
too.”

As I spoke,
however, I knew that I was barely smelling that particular
mule, as all of our coinage metals would need not merely
electrolysis-based refining, but also careful analysis-driven
alloying to get truly 'durable' coins that gave consistent behavior
under the carefully-made 'forging' dies – and the banging of
steam-hammers blanking and then 'pressing' coins would be a continual
clattering rattle in the bowels of certain of the Abbey's
workshops-to-be.

I fervently hoped
Hendrik would learn quickly about the need to redo all of our
coins, and I more-fervently hoped I – or someone else –
could get a good indication of what they were supposed to look like.

“Rest assured,
he will,” said the soft voice. “He knows something about
witch-money, and when he starts seeing all of those polished 'slugs',
that will get onto him.”

“And now, we
need belt-pouches,” I thought. “Two each for those going, plus
two more in the pack and any further spares we can manage, and all of
them with either grenades or other things in them.”

“Look at one of
those things before you decide you only need four pouches per
person,” said the soft voice. “They're very useful in general
– and having spares, if you can carry them, is a wise idea.”

That proved an
understatement of the greatest magnitude possible, for there proved
to be no less than three sizes of the things – and while none were
especially small, the medium size proved to be especially likely: it
had sufficient room for several loaded rifle magazines in its
'floor', and eight padded loops, four to a side, that
accommodated either 'metal pears' – everyone except me was naming
those evil 'little' grenades thusly – or 'firebombs'; and on top of
that load, one could stuff in a pair of added pistol magazines at
each end through the smaller loops there.

“No, best use a
small belt-pouch for those,” I thought. “Keep those
things separate, such that one has about ten or twelve pistol
magazines and one's cleaning kit in a smaller belt-pouch, and two
pistols, both loaded and ready to hand – and a third one somewhere
reachable in case one or the other of the 'main' ones decides to
quit.”

“Very good,”
said the soft voice. “You are learning.”

“Oh,
and one of those little ones in a pocket in case one encounters a
close-up functionary and one wishes relative discretion,” I
thought. This last was sounding more than a little snide, as I knew
pistols of any type tended to be loud enough to attract
attention unless they had 'special equipment' attached to them or
were constructed specially so as to be 'silent'. I wondered if they
had suppressors overseas; if they didn't, I did recall some of the
salient features of such 'mufflers', based on some long-recalled
reading.

“Probably echoes
for miles,” I muttered. “That place will carry sound worse than
anywhere.”

“While those
halls will do that, the reports of those smaller pistols resemble the
sound of an equipment failure, at least if you're a blue-suited
functionary,” said the soft voice, “and since equipment failures
of that type are both commonplace and not their
responsibilities – they memorize what those are – then
unless said thugs are near enough to see you actually pot
someone, you effectively have a suppressed weapon for all the
alarm it will cause.” A pause, then, “and while suppressors are
rare over there, they do exist in some few
out-of-the-way locations.”

“I hope I find
one, then,” I thought.

“Why would you
wish one?” asked Sarah, as she 'tried out' another size of pistol
holster, this for those larger pistols.

“N-no, dear!”
I squeaked. “Those like that are the worst ones!”

“How?” asked
Sarah. She'd stopped trying to insert the pistol just the same.

“They
practically have to be cut off with a saw of some kind if you put
them in those things,” I squeaked. “I'll make some for those
first chance I can – but those things are best, uh...”

“There are tales
of those over there, and they'll desire them,” said the soft voice.

“Uh, why?” I
asked.

“Because
firstly, the troops burned all of them when they found out how
tenaciously they held onto weapons that were among the most-effectual
close-range 'witch-stoppers' to be had,” said the soft voice, “and
then, some people over there have wanted a museum for a while – and
then the medical people want to dismantle them and find out just what
made them so much trouble, even if they're not inclined toward
either of those larger types of pistols.”

“Why is that,
other than they may attempt to escape?” asked Sarah.

“Perhaps those
tests include hand-size – as in delicate surgery wants a smaller
hand...”

“Yes, it does,”
said the soft voice, “and while those tests currently don't specify
hand-size explicitly, once Sarah becomes known of, they will
wish to give her as much training as she can accommodate – as they
know good hands when they see them.”

“Mine are
about...” I was thinking my hands to be utterly unsuited to such
work, even if my fine motor control had improved vastly since coming
here. I knew my attitude wasn't appropriate, as I'd feel worse than
horrible if someone died while under my care.

Such deaths might
as well be deliberate murder as far as I was concerned, if not
outright sacrifices to Brimstone as a witch. That portion of my
thinking had become far worse than it had been since coming
here, and it showed no sign of decreasing in either strength or rate
of increase.

“No, your
hands also,” said the soft voice. “They have some fairly
extensive records regarding people like you, and learning about your
presence will get a fire lit under those people.”

“What will that
do?” asked Karl. “Those blue-suited thugs could stand
burn-piles, but what of those they like to beat into mush?”

“I doubt that
was meant, Karl,” said Sarah dryly. “Now we must hurry, as we do
not have much time. That signal spoken of earlier wants it to yet be
light, as it needs to be both seen and heard, and darkness
will hide it.”